Recruiting Animal

Generation Y Articles

What Drives Gen Y
Gen Y on 60 Minutes
Gen Y Leadership Theory
Boomers Are Evil
Gen Y Hate Lit
Gen Y's Multi-Tasking
The Gen Y Revolution
Gen Y's Networking Skills
Napster Made Me
Anarchism is Groovy
Generational Smackdown
Gen Y is Conservative


No Vacations
Inexperience Rules
Inexperience Rides Again
Gen Y Attacked
All Gens Want Same Things
Gen Y Managers
Seery on Gen Y
Boomer Parents Not Career-Savvy
Helicopter Parents
New Breed of Worker
We're Not Unique
Money Not Priority
Pain For Gain, Si
1969 = 2007
Gen Y Values
The Gen Y Princess
Gen Y Humility
Web 2.0 Breeds Social Skills
Intrinsic Motivation Junkies
Gen Y Exhausted
Rosie Not Exhausted
60s Generation Praised
Brian Tingley
Immigrants vs Gen Y
Gen Y Hates Hippies
How We're Different
Selfish Generation
Growin' Up

Generational Con Man

I read an article this week by Mark Liston. He's a recruiter and he is also a generational traitor and a pathetic social masochist.

Here's the essence of what he says:  I'm a baby-boomer and we're awful. Why? Because we're workaholics. We love blackberries. We can’t text message. And we have old Beatles records in the garage.

We have old Beatle records? Is that a sin now? No, but he treats it like one just so he can suck up to Gen Y.

He goes on to say: You guys are better than us. We had race riots. We went on peace marches. We went to Woodstock. We ducked bullets at Kent State.

Does anyone really think that Mark Liston ducked bullets at Kent State? Or that he was involved in a race riot? Of course not.

Mark is just an ordinary guy -- and so is his audience. In fact, there's probably less difference between Baby Boomers like Mark and Gen Y than between any generations in the last 100 years.

The proof is in the pudding because for the rest of his article Mark gives advice to Gen Y and none of it has anything to do with generational differences at all. Here's a sample of what he says:

• The most useful class I took in school was typing.

• No one asked to see my report cards at any job I ever had.

• Don’t worry about knowing what you want to do 20 years from now.

           All of us who thought we knew changed our minds

• Don't worry about working with people older than you. It's no big deal

It's not bad advice but I was in a rage for three days after I read this article because of the oily, contemptible, cowardly way in which Mark rushes to appease the barbarians.

Then I started to think: Hey, this is actually a fantastic article because it's so stupid that it undercuts its own lies. First the guy says, "I'm dumber than you" and then he says "So, why don't you take my advice?".

Then I realized something else. My friend, The Funny Banker, tells me that when you come right down to it, selling is lying.

Mark is a salesman and, apparently, he knows that if you flatter people you can feed them any kind of baloney you want.

In the comment section underneath this article, the Gen Whiners lap this stuff up. "There's a sucker born every minute," said P.T. Barnum and Generation Y is proving him right.

Audio version

Reference: Back to the Future — A Recruiter’s Thoughts

Mark Liston has many more articles of the same calibre. His blog is here

Michelle Obama Was So Gen Y

Chicago Sun-Times. (edited)

"Michelle could also frustrate her supervisors. White says he gave her the most interesting work he could find because she seemed perennially dissatisfied.

She was, White recalls, "quite possibly the most ambitious associate that I've ever seen." She wanted significant responsibility right away and was not afraid to object if she wasn't getting what she felt she deserved, he says.

At big firms, much of the work that falls to young associates involves detail and tedium. Too monotonous for Michelle, who complained that the work he gave her was unsatisfactory.

"she at one point went over my head and complained [to human resources] that I wasn't giving her enough interesting stuff, and the person came down to my office and said, 'Basically she's complaining that she's being treated like she's a second-year associate,' and we agreed that she was a second-year associate.

I had eight or nine other associates, and I couldn't start treating one of them a lot better."

The Funny Banker on Gen Y Barbie

The Funny Banker read my posting on Gen Y Barbie. This is his reply.

Hasn't this little credit crunch bitch-slapped most of these Gen Y-ner's back to reality a little bit.

I notice that Teresa hasn't exactly held down a job in the real world yet. What were the jobless numbers in the US for November, 500,000?

While technically not the worst on record if you put things in proportion (actually about the 41st worse), but the absolute magnitude is large....and will be getting larger.

This little downturn may be the cold bucket of water that wakes these wet behind the ears neophytes up and helps them put the concepts of:

- We crave personal development (until layoffs start)

- We pursue unconventional paths (while I have zero life responsibility)

- We’re not afraid to ask (who are you asking and when are you asking them - try asking for a raise about now)

- We embrace transparency (until you have competing interests that may force you to do something you might not be so proud of) and

- We just want to do what we love (Blinding flash of the obvious: are you the only person who wants to do what she loves? Me and everyone else prefers drudgery?)

What, does this chick think that her father always had a comb over and her mother always wore "mom jeans"?

At one point, everyone has dreams and aspiration, but guess what Teresa, you (and your siblings) came along and your parents had to get all responsible and stuff.

I know, its totally uncool, but true, kids are the reason parents get all uptight, boring and conventional - I can say that as a risk-taking 30-something with a young child.

The self-righteousness of a new cohort entering the workforce is nothing new, its just that at some point your schtick starts wearing thin - and that point was about a year ago. The holier than thou attitude is boring already.

Visit The Funny Banker's online store.

Gen Y Barbie

BioJobblog pointed me to yet another article about Gen Y. I left this reply.

Like this is so right on. People in my generation were very much a part of traditional authoritarian culture.

We were so brainwashed to hold our elders in a kind of awe that we had no sense of deserving any kind of decent treatment and were ready to take whatever the bosses chose to dish out.

Then I come to America and see that everything is different. People were free here. They didn’t take that kind of crap. Wait a second, I’m confused. That was 1968! Help me. Was that Gen Y in 1968?

Barbie is modest enough to back off of some of her claims, here, in response to the comments made on her initial posting. But she still claims to be able to compare Gen Y to the generations immediately preceding her own.

So lemme axe you dis: where do these guys get their ideas of the past? They weren't there so do they get it from their parents, teachers, books, magazines? Because it's pretty obvious that there's a lot they don't know.

Elementary School Source of Gen Y's Problems

Reference: The Personal Branding Blog

According to super expert, Ronnie Alsop, Gen Y's professional flaws were created by a misguided reward system in the country's elementary school system.

Here's the problem. When you fail in these schools, you get treated like a winner. The teachers don't want anyone to suffer the pain of loss so when a game is played everyone gets a prize and a pat on the back even if they didn't win.

The habit of praising losers and rewarding them has given Gen Y-ners a false sense of entitlement. They have been taught that they deserve the rewards of victory even when they are under-performing.

So in the working world they want constant rewards -- like pay raises and promotions every six months -- and when their bosses refuse to reward them for their limitations they accuse them of being slave drivers who have sold their souls to a corporate ethos that has no respect for human beings.

The false idea that they are better than they are also accounts for some of their paradoxical demands. They want senior roles that require independent thinking but they also want constant hand-holding by their bosses. They call it feedback and professional development but, really, it is on-the-job-training for positions they aren't fit to handle.

Boomers Wrecked the Economy

From Richard Berry in The American Thinker.

The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.

Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world.

...this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party.

On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves.... On the micro level... they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise.

Sounds a lot like Gen Y to me. Note as well that Berry attacks the Boomer Elite, not the ordinary rank and file Boomer. Maybe we should make a similar distinction with Gen Y.

Boomers Bankrupt

Forced to start fresh at age 50.

Forbes.com claims that many boomers "will choose to stay trapped in miserable marriages for fear of braving new, unstable lives."

But others "will be forced to start from financial ground zero because of layoffs, bankruptcy, divorce or even a spouse's death."

So, it offers 7 steps to self rescue.

Hat Tip: Anita Brusseze

Baby Boomers Have Authoritarian Culture

Baby Boomers are authoritarian. That's what Gen Y says, right?. But what are we to make of this article by Lynda Hurst in The Toronto Star.

"There has never been a year like 1968.... It was the year the front end of the baby boom (a term not yet in fatiguing use) realized it had the numbers to flex some political muscle.

The resulting upheaval was global.

No one had predicted this generation.

Growing up in post-war prosperity, but under an ever-present nuclear threat, it had emerged highly educated, but critical of the prevailing culture. It rejected conformity and materialism.

Most of all, it rejected blind adherence to authority,
and not just when it came to drugs and sex.

Demolishing a Weak Argument

Joanna Bourke writes:

For many feminists, veiling is synonymous with the oppression of women.

What women in Muslim societies need are American liberties, the story goes.

If they don't willingly embrace “bikinis and boobs”, they can be bombed into submission.

Mick Hartley attacks her yadda yadda yadda style of argumentation by asking for details.

The story goes? Which story goes? Is it a common view among feminists that if Muslim women don't want American liberties... they should be bombed into submission?

And what liberties, he asks, are we talking about?

being able to walk around with their faces uncovered, or being able to go out without the permission of their male guardians, or, God forbid, even being able to get a job or be financially independent

Then he chides Bourke for dismissing these everyday freedoms under the heading "bikinis and boobs" and concludes:

It's not a view I've come across, and I very much doubt that it's a view that Joanna Bourke has come across, but it sets the rhetorical tone.